Month: October 2015

¹³ This is the path of those who have foolish confidence;
    yet after them people approve of their boasts.^[b] Selah
¹⁴ Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol;
    death shall be their shepherd,
and the upright shall rule over them in the morning.
    Their form shall be consumed in Sheol, with no place to dwell.
¹⁵ But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol,
    for he will receive me. Selah

From time to time we see the stories of someone being rescued from captivity. It can be a group of soldiers being held prisoner in a Japanese prison camp as depicted in The Great Raid, or it may be a group of young girls kidnapped and held for years in a Cleveland suburb. No matter the circumstances there is always this sense of helplessness on the part of those who are being held captive. They have no way to rescue themselves. Their only hope is that someone on the outside has not forgotten them and is determined to find them and free them. When that rescue comes, the shock, joy, delight, tears, and smiles are all evident at the same moment on the faces of the rescued. Their gratitude towards their rescuers is immense. Their devotion to them is life long.

Psalm 49 reminds us that we are all hostages. We are all held captive to sin and death. No matter your station in life, you will eventually die. You will be consumed. There is no way out, nothing you can do to change your circumstances. You are indeed utterly helpless. Your only hope is in an outside rescuer. Verse 15 points to that rescuer. God can ransom your soul. It is what He has done through Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection.  Our problem is we don’t always recognize the reality of our captivity. We have always lived captive to our sin and death and that somehow seems normal. We need to awaken to the fat that our lives had an expiration date and because of our sin and rebellion against God we will spend eternity in captivity. But because of His great love for us, God has never forgotten our need and provides for it if only we would trust in Him.

Recognizing that you are rescued by God, that Jesus went to the cross for you, should result in shock, joy, delight, tears and smiles. It should result in love for God and a lifelong devotion to Him. I need to remind myself everyday that Jesus went to the cross so I might live and I need to live for Him above all else.

We have thought on your steadfast love, O God,
    in the midst of your temple.

What do you think of when you think of going to church? I hesitate to use the phrase, “going to church” because there is a very real sense in which we do not go to church but rather followers of Christ are the church. But I will bow to the common understanding of the phrase and speak of going to church. So what do you focus on when you go to church? Are you thinking about the songs that you don’t like singing? Are you pondering how long the sermon is because your favorite team is kicking off at 1pm? Are you thinking about those people who have wandered into worship and they clearly are not dressed appropriately? Are you annoyed with your spouse because they made you run late or because they nagged you into going to church? Maybe you are thinking about how the preacher really didn’t understand or explain the passage correctly and you are now wondering if you can trust the rest of their teaching.

The author of Psalm 48 reflects on what a gathered group of people focused on when they went to church, the temple. They thought of the steadfast love of God. They pondered the strength of God’s love for them and how that love would never die or never end. That love from God to His people is the strongest motivating force you are ever going to experience. To fully experience the love of God in your life and see that love demonstrated in the death of Jesus on the Cross is the most powerful, life changing experience you will ever have. It becomes the motivator of your worship.

My best times in worshipping God are those times when I am struck once again by God’s love for me. That love breaks me. It breaks me of my pride. It breaks me of my anger. It breaks me of my insecurities. It breaks me of my love for sin. In that brokenness I find myself enthralled with God because of His love. Indeed it is true what Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than he lay down his life for a friend”. Jesus laid down His life for me. What great love! He also said that I love Him because He first loved me. When I was still His enemy, when my life was opposed to God, when my heart desired only my sin and my selfishness, Jesus loved me with such a steadfast love that He went to the Cross for me. Pondering such love brings me to my knees and to tears and my heart pours out love to Jesus in response to His love.

Last night I watched the Pittsburgh Steelers win a football game on the last play of the game as time expired. It wasn’t a playoff game and certainly was not the Super Bowl. It was just a regular season game. But I still clapped and cheered loudly enough and with enough enthusiasm that I woke my wife who had gone to sleep long before the end of the game. That is what fans do. You cheer for your team. You get excited when they win and you celebrate. If you are actually at the game you get caught up in the excitement of it all. People color their hair to match the team colors, paint their bodies to match, wave towels with the team colors and generally get more emotional than they do over most anything else in life. It doesn’t matter if it is American Football, Baseball, Soccer, or Rugby. It doesn’t matter if it is in the USA, England, Brazil, China, or Latvia. People get excited about sports to the point that it takes on religious overtones.

This morning I wake up and read Psalm 47 and am confronted with the juxtaposition of how we cheer for our teams and how we should cheer for our God.

So much of worship in the Bible is a public demonstration of love for God. There is shouting, clapping, dancing, singing, waving branches in the air. When Jesus entered Jerusalem on what has become known as Palm Sunday, it probably looked more like a parade celebrating a championship sports team than the typical worship time in most churches, at least most western churches. For some reason Christians in Uganda, Egypt, Bangladesh, India, and Brazil have no problem publicly expressing their love and affection for God. They don’t seem to care that they are being emotional and enthusiastic about God. They don’t fear being seen as fanatical in their devotion to God. I wonder, what it is about many western Christians that we will insist on quiet, emotionless worship at 11am on Sunday and then break loose with all sorts of shouting, clapping, fist-bumping, and chest thumping at 1pm?

Love is clearly a major theme in the Bible. From cover to cover it speaks of God’s love for humanity. Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is the two-pronged exhortation to love God with all we are and to love our neighbor as ourselves. But for all the discussion about love in the Bible people rarely if ever think of the Bible promoting romantic love. Psalm 45 is all about romantic love. It affirms and glorifies the relationship between a righteous king and the woman he loves.

Consider these words from near the end of the Psalm

In Psalm 44 we see the importance of history and how God is the prime actor in the story. It is about remembering the deeds that God had performed in the days of our ancestors so we can trust Him to perform similar deeds in our day. It is about learning that the victories of our ancestors were really God’s victories and we need to both rely on Him and give Him the credit He is due for those victories.

Jesus affirmed the value of history and that all history is actually His story. He told the religious leaders that if they truly understood the scriptures and all they speak of from the past, then they would have known Him because the whole story of history in the Old Testament and the New, is the story of Jesus. He also told His closest disciples that when they come to the communion table they are remembering history. We eat and remember. We drink and remember. We remember and we proclaim His death until He comes again. We remember His story.

I take great comfort and gain strength for my faith knowing that God has actually stepped into history time and again. He has never abandoned us to our own devices but has consistently made Himself known in the story. The people of the scriptures reminded one another of the things God had done in the past in order to have strength, wisdom, and direction for the future. When you read the Bible and the stories of the people in it, remember that God is telling us the story of history so we will see how He, as the lead character, is the whole reason for the story. It is so we can live confidently in the present and move boldly into the future because He is with us as He has always been with us.

³ Send out your light and your truth;
    let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy hill
    and to your dwelling!
⁴ Then I will go to the altar of God,
    to God my exceeding joy,
and I will praise you with the lyre,
    O God, my God.

“That may be true for you but it is not true for me”. That phrase may be causing more confusion and damage in the world than any other soundbite you will hear. It is rooted in the idea that all truth is relative, meaning that in different situations or for different people, truth is like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder. We end up with situations in which people are perfectly willing to accept two fundamentally contradictory statements as both being equally true and valid. We do this in defiance of all rules of logic. In practice it means I can say that for me the sky is green and no insistence on your part, no use of scientific instruments to measure the color spectrum and define the sky as blue and not green will make any difference. The actual reality of the sky being blue and not green is irrelevant. Why? Because for me it is green, that is my truth.

What we have done is confuse the differences between truth, opinions, values, and personal experience. Just because I experience something in a certain way does not make it objectively true. I used the color of the sky intentionally. I suffer from what is usually called being color blind. People immediately think that I only see in black and white. A better phrase would be color deficient. Absolute color-blindness is extremely rare. Rather it is a matter of degrees. I see lots of colors but the receptors in my eyes to pick up color are less robust than those in most people. As a result I have trouble picking up shades of red and green. That means light pink, which has very little red in it, can looked washed out and gray to me. Certain shades of green look more brown. When I was a kid having the names of colors on the crayons was a must. But here is the point, the fact that it is brown to me and not green does not change the objective truth of the color. It is brown. Everyone who does not have color deficiency issues will see green and objective scientific equipment will say it is green. What I need to do is adjust my understanding. I can say, I see it as brown but I must acknowledge that my experience is deceiving me and keeping me from the truth.

The push to say all truth is relative is a push to make my experience what determines truth. That is both arrogant and lazy. Arrogant because it sets me up as the pinnacle of all truth. Lazy because it excuses me from ever having to do the hard work of thinking, debating, researching, and even changing my mind. What the Psalmist is saying in these verses today is that it is God’s truth that really matters. What determines the reality of things is not what is true for you or true for me but what God has determined to be true. I may experience something, but my experience is extremely limited. My experience will help shape my opinions and ideas but that is not the same as something being objectively true.

I suspect that one of the reasons we are drawn to the idea of relative truth is that in the short-term it is a comfort to us. It is a comfort because it requires so little of us and we are lulled into thinking that all is right with the world and we understand it. It is far more comfortable for me to ignore the reality of the color shirt I am wearing and that it clashes badly with my pants. It is harder to work through the truth of the issue and either ask my wife for advice on clothing or to remember what shirt to not wear with what pants, We think that by ignoring the hard work of finding truth and just living in the world of all things being relative that we will be much happier and at peace, that we will have joy and freedom and not be bound by someone else’s ideas of truth. But this Psalm points out that true joy and freedom are only to be found in God’s truth. That truth is Jesus Himself who made the shocking statement, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me”. I must cling to Jesus as the truth and the light. Only in Jesus am I truly free. Only in Jesus am I equipped to face the world and find joy.

Usually when we say someone is obsessed it is not a compliment. We generally mean to imply that the obsessed person is out of balance, a bit off their rocker, myopic, even mentally unhinged. We think they need to back off a tad and get a life. They are missing so much by being obsessed with whatever the object of their obsession may be. This is also the case when it comes to God. Most people are fine if you have a little bit of God in your life, just don’t make Him the center of everything. Keep a healthy balance people say. But Psalm 42 will simply not allow for that kind of ‘balance”.

As a deer pants for flowing streams,
    so pants my soul for you, O God.
² My soul thirsts for God,
    for the living God.

The Psalmist compares our need for God to that of a deer in desperate need of water. A deer, or any creature, in desperate need of water is going to be obsessed with finding that life-giving liquid. Nothing will distract the deer from the hunt for water. There is no such thing as a healthy balance at that point. Health, indeed life itself, is utterly dependent on fulfilling the need for water. Health can only be found by having a laser focused obsession for water.

True health as a human being can only come by being obsessed with God. God must be the center of our lives. Everything must revolve around our relationship with God for us to be healthy. In fact balance is only found by having God at the center. We get out of balance and unhealthy when we allow other things to get in the way of our quest for God. Just like a deer would get sick and eventually die if it let chasing butterflies get in the way of finding water.

There is nothing more important in life than thirsting for God and having that thirst met. Anything less is substituting a false cure, an idol, in place of God. Our very souls are longing for God but in our sinfulness we let other things compete with God and we suffer in the process. True health and true balance, something we long for, comes through total, laser focused, obsession for and devotion to God through Jesus Christ.

The Bible says that you reap what you sow. Put another way, what goes around comes around. In other words, your actions have consequences and if your actions are good and helpful and just, then eventually goodness, help, and justice will come your way. If your actions are cruel and deceitful and wicked, then eventually cruelty, deceit, and wickedness will come your way. In the first few verses of Psalm 40 we see the same principle at work. In this case it is good things coming from the Lord to the one who considers the poor.

Blessed is the one who considers the poor!
    In the day of trouble the Lord delivers him;
² the Lord protects him and keeps him alive;
    he is called blessed in the land;
    you do not give him up to the will of his enemies.
³ The Lord sustains him on his sickbed;
    in his illness you restore him to full health

The specific topic is how one treats the poor. It is interesting to note that the author does not give a specific program or plan of action that pleases God. He simply says, “Blessed is the one who considers the poor”. In other words, blessed is that one who even gives a thought to the situation of the poor, and by implication does something about it. Most if the time we don’t consider the poor. We flip right passed the commercial with hungry children in it. We avert our gaze from the homeless guy at the street corner with a cardboard sign. We do all we can to keep from considering them and especially from having any human connection. Why do we not consider them? I suspect it is because if one really considered the plight of the poor then one would be compelled to do something about it. It is the person who does not really ponder their plight who does nothing. If you consider the poor you are forced to deal with the fact that they are real people and that often their reason for being poor has nothing to do with laziness or trying to scam the system.

The Bible has ways of dealing with laziness and scam artists. But more far more often than warning us about such folks it commands us to consider the needs of the poor and do something about their situation. One’s political affiliation should have no bearing on if you consider the poor and do something about it. It should only have bearing on the what. You may think the answer is to provide more in the way of food and medical assistance. Then again you may have huge philosophical reasons to oppose that, saying people need to work. That’s fine. Then maybe you should be supportive of job training programs and daycare for single moms so they can go to work. There is no political ideology that wants people to remain poor. So there is no political reason for not considering the poor and finding something you can do about it, no matter who small the gesture seems.

The point I am making is not to promote any particular political or social agenda. Rather the point is to highlight a biblical teaching that jumps off countless pages of the BIble. Followers of Christ are to consider the poor and in their considering, find some way to make their plight less dire. It can be a small thing that helps one person or a massive program that helps many. But you will never do any of that if you do not first consider them. Look into their eyes and consider them. Look into their lives and consider them. Look at their children and consider them. As you consider them, put yourself in their place. Consider what it would be like if you were the one uncertain of your next meal, or living out of a large garbage bag and a grocery cart. What would it be like if you were the single parent with three kids who had been abandoned by a spouse and left with nothing? Consider those things. And then, simply do what the Lord puts on your heart. It is that easy and that hard all at once.

Bashing religion has become something a the intellectual sport du jour. If you want to make a splash then write a book about the death of God ro the evils of religion. Even among evangelical Christians religion bashing, and bashing the church along with it, has grown in popularity to immense proportions. People think it started with the likes of Freud who said we created God to assuage our guilt, and Marx and Nietzsche who said it was all about holding power over others.  But in reality Jesus was the biggest religion basher to ever walk the planet. He refused to allow people to use religion in order to justify themselves and their behavior. He challenged the religious people, who justified themselves because they tithed, gave ten percent of their resources, all the way down to counting out peppercorns, “9 for me, and 1 for God”. Jesus said they were completely missing the point. Yes your tithing is correct he said, but in the midst of your being so religious, you were leaving out justice and mercy for the poor, the widow, and the orphan. Then he reminds them that God desires mercy and not sacrifice. In other words, God wants you to truly love your neighbor and not try to justify yourself for following all the rules that make you feel so spiritually superior.

Psalm 40 get to exactly that point. God is not delighting in the offerings and sacrifices of the Psalmist. Rather, God is rescuing the Psalmist from his sin and destruction. not because of the religious efforts of the Psalmist, but because of the great mercy of God. Then comes the crucial point. Because of God’s rescuing him, the Psalmist is now motivated from the heart to sing God’s praises and even to follow God’s law. not so that God will accept him or that he would justify himself, but rather because of what God has for him. His motivation is not religious but relational. He loves God and wants to express that love, in gratitude for God’s salvation.

On the outside the behavior of the religious person seeking to justify their actions and the non-religious person seeking to love God for His actions may look the same. But as the Word says, “God looks on the heart”. This is not meant to excuse bad behavior that has a good heart behind it. Rather this is meant to call out hypocritical religion that looks good on the outside but is dead on the inside.

In the end God does not want your religion, He wants your heart. If your heart is deeply in love with the Lord for all His mercies, then the outside will eventually reflect that.